Tally tells the tale: Msaker’s wearing 4 pieces of Deadly Gladiator’s and 2 Wintergrasp pieces. Honorus is wearing 4 pieces of Deadly and 3 Wintergrasp pieces. Greenclaw is wearing 3 pieces of Deadly and 1 Wintergrasp piece. Arcarius is joining the fray and is wearing 1 piece of Deadly. The lovely wife’s Droonda is wearing 3 pieces of Deadly and 1 Wintergrasp piece. (If Horde ever manage a win, ever, she can visit the vendor and pick up her 2nd Wintergrasp piece. Horde, however, never win.)

And given Horde never, ever, win in Wintergrasp (not until Tenacity is 100 and Blizzard ports all Alliance out of Wintergrasp and dumps them in Swamp of Sorrow to lessen defense of the fortress) it’s kind of a free-for-all easy place to earn a little honor, earn a few shards, and some marks, and the wife and I are going take advantage and gear our Alliance toons up a bit before the next expansion.

I mean, I thought crafted was as good as it gets for the casual. Heck no. Crafting at the iLevel 200 level was a waste (except for the weapons). In an initial set of iLevel 187 crafted gear available at level 78 (i.e. Savage Saronite, Overcast, Eviscerator’s, etc.) you’ll be able to acquire a lot of the iLevel 213 set before you reach 80 just pvping I’m sure. Those crafted epics just aren’t worth the effort. (As it turns out.) Tournament (or other dailies) for the cash. PvP for the gear.

One thing though: There are no weapons available in PvP unless you accumulate Arena Points. (And if there’s stuff available for badges, why? since if you’ve got badges you can have your instance weapons.) So a Blacksmith who can provide spellpower maces and daggers, and bonecrushing maces one- and two-handed, is required. Well, that’s not entirely true either. You can acquire weapons nearly the equivalent of the Titansteel ones at the Tournament. 25 Seals gets you weapons that compare.

I’ve been doing this prior to every expansion. At the tail end of the current expansion’s content, basically leveled to the end-level, and not raiding, I PvP. Msaker had the full set of Level 60 PvP gear. He had a few pieces of the Level 70 gear. He’s fairly close to have another full set of the Level 80 gear. (That’s to say “Full set for this casual player.”) And I’m going to say this gear accrual has never been easier. If you’re Horde on Kirin Tor, come to Wintergrasp. Do it now. If you’re Alliance on Kirin Tor… “Ooh, look. Ice Crown. Shinies. Go there. Wintergrasp will be fine. Honest.”

Wanna trade servers for awhile? It’s easier to save up badges and/or lose 10 arena matches a week for gear then it is to gear up through Wintergrasp on my server as Alliance. On the rare occasions that we have WG, it is cause for major celebration. I’m surprised we don’t crash the Northrend server when everyone and their dog piles into the Keep to get their VoA fix before we lose it again.

Hey guys, I learnt a lesson recently thanks to the Khazuals on Khaz’Goroth in relation to Wintergrasp… and that lesson is, spam trade, get everyone to WG early, and then defend the workshops… NOBODY defends Wintergrasp fortress itself.

For attack obviously just concentrate on owning all the workshops… don’t even both running in front of the fortress to get those rank ups, because without workshops, you don’t need to the ranks.. you get the idea.

The suckiest thing for you guys of course would be not being able to get into VoA to get the extra PvP drops. 25 man drops relentless if you’re lucky, too :-O

I can’t wait for 3.3, I’ll be able to supplement my PvP gear just by doing “chain random heroics” to get all my furious gear. Mmm… emblems of triumph! 🙂